EXPRESSION OF THE RAG-2 GENE IN MURINE CENTRAL-NERVOUS-SYSTEM TUMOR-CELL LINES

Two tightly linked recombination activating genes, RAG-1 and RAG-2, are involved in VDJ recombination of the immune system. Although these genes were originally thought to be expressed exclusively in precursor B and T cells, RAG-1 transcripts were recently found in the murine central nervous system(CNS)[Chun et al., Cell 6, 189, (1991)]. We found that the RAG-2 gene was expressed in CNS tumor cell lines, melanoma(B-16) and skin fibroblast(A9). RAG-1 expression was not found in any non-lymphoid cell lines examined including CNS tumor cell lines. Another VDJ recombination-related gene RBP Jκ was expressed in all tumor cell lines examined. It remains to be seen whether expression of RAG-1 and RAG-2 in CNS is abortive or functionally important. © 1991 Academic Press, Inc.